On the comparative healthiness of the parish of Hackney / by Samuel Roper.

  • Roper, Samuel.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the comparative healthiness of the parish of Hackney / by Samuel Roper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    )4 Ihese statements closely resemble each other, except that the severe weather at Christmas 1840, added to the mortality of that quarter. Now, on comparing the deaths in 1841, with the popula- tion as ascertained by the census in that year, viz , 38,000 in round numbers,- we shall find the annual mortality to be one in 55, instead of one in 60, as deduced from the Registrar General’s Report • and a similar result will, I doubt not, be found to occur in all the other districts. In the year 1839, 7643 males and 8023 females died of typhus tevci in England and Wales. In the same period, 28,106 males, and 31,453 females died of consumption, and these are about the usual and average numbers. For it is one of the most curious and startling results of statistical inquiries, that the march of society is almost as uniform, and nearly as much amenable to general laws, as are the motions of the heavenly bodies. Not only do we find in the same society the same annual recurrence of births, deaths, and marriages, and about the same proportion of diseases, but even the same number of suicides, and of crimes, whether against persons or against property. Vide “ Quetelet sur l’Homme,” and “ Guerrv, Essai sur la Statisque Morale.” p. 69. d Tlie authorities for these statements are “Quetelet sur l’Homme,” ‘ Hawkins s Medical Statistics,” and a very able article in the 131st Number of the Quarterly Review. e Hawkins’ Medical Statistics, page 31. ' Large Towns have been emphatically called “ the Graves of the Human Race.”* The mortality of Liverpool, in 1839, was as high as One in 33|; that of Glasgow, which in 1821 was One in 39, had increased to One in 26 in 1838, a frightful augmentation in only 17 years.f In this country, it appears, that the annual mortality of cities is to that of the Agricultural Counties as L44 is to TOO, or nearly * By Sussmilch and Dr. Price. t Report on the Health of Towns, pp. 8 and 13.